Blog by Lucy Courtenay

Jumble-icious

Pop the goodies on the trestle, / Don’t you think this lovely dress’ll / Find a home as soon as Lynn / Lets the plastic baggers in? / What’s the entrance fee we’re charging?/ Got to stop them all from barging / Past the nearly newish rack / Straight towards the bric-a-brac.

Jumble sales. Jumbling to those in the know. It’s like being a millionaire with a gold credit card. I’ll take that, and that. Maybe even that, despite the crackling manmade fibres. Oh, I’m so buying that full-length velour ball gown. And I know I’ll give the asymmetrical jumper a go even though I’m not entirely sure which way is up. Put your elbows and your capacious flat-bottomed shopper away, Madam. I saw the embroidered biker jacket first.

No other retail experience comes close. We’re talking armfuls. We’re talking endless plastic bags filled to the brim. A blissful half an hour of trying things on back at home, weeping with laughter and gasping with delight, sorting out what to keep and what to pass on to next week’s Scouts event. Best buy of the day: the dress which shall henceforth be known as Princess Margaret 1976. Elmoor of London, it says on the label. Elmoor. It speaks of tweed, smoky coffee houses, talcum powder and Bri-Nylon. It’s time-travel boiled into a frock. If I’m not invited to a vintage garden party very soon, I shall have to host one.

Truffle hunt among the blouses, / 20p? You’re safe as houses, / Not a waste of cash, I swear it, / If you never get to wear it. / Love the Pierrot lustreware! / Got to have a bust to wear / This trouser-suit, it’s cut so low / (It once was mine, I ought to know).

Bric-a-brac has never appealed as much as those mountains of over-washed jumpers, the long collars on psychedelic drip-dry shirts, the rail of bling-button Jaeger suits, the occasional item which produces a mystified silence followed by: “Oh well, I’ll buy it anyway and find out what it is when I get it home.” In the world of jumbling there’s no such thing as buyer’s remorse.

Have a cuppa now we’re done. / Wasn’t that a lot of fun? / Take a slice of lardy cake. / Hope I never have to bake / Another batch of home-made scones, / They weren’t as good as dear Yvonne’s.

Off to dance the night away with Lord Lichfield now. But before I put on my dancing slippers, I must alert you to my guest blog slot on the lovely Girls Heart Books tomorrow, March 12. www.girlsheartbooks.com. And there will be giveaways of WILD #1: TIGER TROUBLE. See you there!